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.This was Charlie freaking out.This was Charlie acting like their father.Adra sent a simple text to her brother: “Call me so I know you’re not dead.”It was what they used to ask their dad to do years ago.If that didn’t get a response, then there was a problem.Goddammit.“Adra,” Lola said.Adra forced herself to smile.“Yeah? You gonna hog all that calamari or what?”Lola passed another plate, disturbing the precarious balance of the mountain of appetizers between them.But she didn’t lose her focus.Lola never did.“Adra, I really do love you,” Lola said softly.“So I’m saying this from a place of love.You don’t have to talk to me, but you’ve gotta talk to someone eventually.You can’t keep carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders like this.You have to let someone help every once in a while.”“I know,” Adra said, nodding slowly.“I know.”Except that she didn’t, really.It was one of those things that made perfect rational sense, and yet whenever she thought about it, her entire body revolted against the idea in a fit of panic.And Lola was watching her try not to freak out.“Well,” Lola said, popping a bacon-wrapped scallop in her mouth.“If you want something else to freak out about besides your reluctance to rely on your friends, I can help with that.”Adra laughed out loud, her hand to her chest.“Please.”Lola smiled evilly.“I hear tomorrow you begin coaching the actual scenes? Like, scene scenes? With Ford? And your ex? In the same room?”“Oh my God,” Adra said, laughing helplessly until a tear rolled down her cheek.“What is my life.”~ * ~ * ~Ford and Roman’s pool game had been ruined by a single phone call from Roger Corvis, executive producer of Submit and Surrender.It had started off badly.Ford could hear Corvis’s tone from across the pool table, and laughed when he thought about how Roman would handle the guy.But when Roman came back, he wasn’t laughing it off.He looked serious.“Something happen?” Ford said.He hated the idea of the film taking over Volare, but it did give him back his friendship with Adra.He cared now.Damn it.“Someone leaked the filming location,” Roman said, setting up another shot.“Security is going to be an issue.Corvis seemed to think it was someone at Volare.”“Bullshit.”“That’s what I said, in so many words,” Roman smiled.“That said, we need to cut this short.”“Of course.”Roman looked at his friend carefully.“What did Claudia have to say?”“Nothing important.She’s moving to L.A.They’ll want memberships.”Roman raised an eyebrow but said nothing.Roman had known Ford when he’d found out that his wife had been having an affair with his best friend and colleague, Jesse Gifford, and that that had been the real root of the problems in their marriage.The games that Claudia had been playing with Ford for months while their marriage deteriorated were just about her guilt, nothing more, and that had been one last mindfuck to add to the list.It wasn’t something Ford talked about much, but Roman knew, and that mattered.Still, there were some things even Roman didn’t know.Like about the child.No one knew about the child.“Ford,” Roman said, setting his pool cue down.“You know that Adra is nothing like Claudia.”“Of course she isn’t,” Ford said.The idea pissed him off, and what Roman was getting at pissed him off even more.It wasn’t about simple parallels; Adra didn’t have to be just like his ex-wife to be incompatible with him.And Adra was the one who’d called it off.“Don’t compare them.”Roman put his hands up.“Of course.I shouldn’t have offended Adra with the comparison.”“No, you shouldn’t.”“Do you know what you’re doing, Ford?” Roman asked seriously.Ford met his gaze.It was obvious what Roman was talking about: Adra.“About as much as you knew what you were doing with Lola,” Ford said.“She’s my best friend, Roman.I won’t let anything or anyone hurt her, including me.”“Your best friend?” Roman said.“Stop smiling.”Roman only smiled again, this time ruefully.“Neither of us should be smiling.Someone leaked the location, and that might hurt all of us.We have a long night of security preparations ahead of us.That, and finding out who the leak is.”“You got a guy for that?”“Not in Los Angeles.Do you?”“Yeah.Private investigator I’ve used for legal work,” Ford said.“He’ll get it done.”Ford made the call, and then spent the rest of the night trying to figure out how to secure an entire compound from a ravenous press and a rabid fan base.By the time he drove by the Volare compound, the photographers had already staked the place out, and there was another accident at that damn stoplight involving a news van and a food truck that had shown up to feed the gathering fans.It had taken just a few hours for the circus to start.People were going completely crazy over this movie.And Adra was going to have to get through this sea of security risks the next morning.The studio would take care of the movie people, but Ford didn’t trust them to take care of Volare people.Which was how he ended up knocking on a neighbor’s door at about six in the morning.***The neighbor—Volare’s neighbor to the south, to be precise—was actually surprisingly accommodating.An older guy named Dan had owned his Venice property since the seventies, and he still surfed every day.He was friends with Thea, and was perfectly willing to let Ford hang out until Adra was due to arrive.Just as he knew Adra would be about to get up, Ford texted her directions.“Avoid Abbot-Kinney, and don’t go directly to Volare.Meet me at 28 Altair.”“What happened?” she asked.“Secret’s out,” Ford wrote back.It wasn’t until he saw her face as she stood on Dan’s front porch, waiting for him, that he realized he could have chosen his words better.She looked confused and way too anxious for this early in the morning.Ah.She thought he meant that secret.Which now meant he was thinking about that night.Who was he kidding, he’d be thinking about that no matter what.Just looking at her was enough to stir up those memories.He just had to deal with it.“The press knows they’re filming the movie at Volare,” he said, trying not to smile at her nervousness.“Right, of course,” Adra said.She bit her lip and looked down at her feet.Damn, did he want to kiss her.“So what am I doing here?”“You’re getting sneaked in the back way,” Ford said.“No way you’re going through that goddamn gauntlet out front.”“The back way?” she asked, eyebrow raised.“And what about Derrick and Olivia?”“They’re the studio’s responsibility,” Ford said, leaving it unsaid what he knew to be true: Adra was his responsibility.“Follow me.”He took her hand, and ignored the nearly overwhelming desire to take the rest of her.Neighbor Dan’s house had a sizable backyard with plenty of pretty looking trees with decent climbing branches.Ford had no idea what kind they were, but he would have been all over them as a little boy.Volare had been careful not to screw with the Zen appeal of Dan’s garden when they’d constructed the tall wall that bounded the compound, and Dan had remained grateful.And now Ford was grateful for those trees
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